


Nature/Nurture

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Batfamily (DCU), Clones, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Humor, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: In which all the Robins are Bruce Wayne clones and it takes Bruce a distressingly long time to notice.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 47
Kudos: 314





	Nature/Nurture

**Author's Note:**

> I literally haven't checked in on BatComics since Super Sons got cancelled so don't expect current canon. And even with the old stuff, we're working in a nebulous timeline. What do you guys care though? Canon is for the weak and this fic is borderline crack. Roll with it. 
> 
> (also, my creativity broke like six months into the pandemic and then abruptly, after months of nothing, choked this entire thing out yesterday. I'm afraid to scare it away again, so this is less beta'd than normal. I'll do a clean up pass later, but for now, apologies.)

Truth is, Bruce doesn’t notice, not at first. When he picks Dick up from the circus, alone and scared, his adoptive parents dead beside him, Batman had still mostly been an urban legend. He had enemies, yes, but not the kind of enemies who were willing to spin elaborate plots to catch his attention. And while the tabloids speculated about the similarities between Brucie Wayne and his new ward, Dick was quite emphatically product of a two-parent family. By the time he picked up Jason, Dick was tipping into adulthood with a _look_ significantly more daring than any of Bruce’s and his workouts had been aimed more to keep him fast than bulk him out.

So really, Bruce is not to blame when he first sees Jason Todd, tiny, filthy and snarling, as he lunges for Batman with a tire iron that he has already used to steal three tires off the Batmoblie and thinks, _this kid could be Dick’s double_.

(Bruce will decide in retrospect that this is _technically_ true.)

The press assumes Brucie Wayne’s second philanthropic adoption is for the same reason as the first. But while he would have needed to be scandalously young to father Dick, Jason feels a lot more plausible.

Which is why, two weeks into Jason’s stay at the manner, he’s toying with the idea of a DNA test. It would soften the blows from the tabloids and Jason’s parentage is a good deal murkier than Dick’s had been. Even if it only confirmed the information Jason provided, it could give a lead on any remaining family. The boy had been living on the streets for months but he’d fiercely loved his mother and that kind of love doesn’t come unearned. Bruce had promised Jason would never go back to foster care, but there was a chance a test could locate Catherine Todd’s family and maybe provide a different home.

Only Bruce contaminates the DNA sample. When he gets the results, he finds himself staring back at his own profile. Not a familial relationship. An exact match. A clean cut mistake.

He looks to the adoption papers, half-filled on his desk and abandons the thought of redoing the test.

Instead, he walks downstairs, papers in hand and finds Jason. The boy is still skittish, but it is already clear how much being at the manner will help him. His eyes have lost the desperate edge, and when Bruce asks him if he wants to stay, Jason shakes himself like he thinks he’s dreaming.

Then he darts forward and wraps his arms briefly around Bruce’s waist. The hug is over before Bruce can respond.

Jason pulls himself back, shrinking into his hoodie, as awkward as Bruce has ever seen him.

“I’m glad you approve, Jaylad,” Bruce says.

* * *

In retrospect, Bruce should have discussed the adoption with Dick first. But he makes a lot of mistakes with Dick. Jason won’t be the last but Bruce is desperately hoping the fights won’t get _worse_.

“I can’t believe you!” Dick screams. “You don’t throw a kid out because being Robin is too dangerous and then pick up a new kid and immediately make him Robin!”

“That’s not how it happened!” Bruce shouts back.

“Then there’s no one else that could have looked after him?” Dick pushes. “No one but you?”

Bruce thinks, guiltily of the paternity test he’d discarded. “He didn’t trust the foster care system, Dick. But he did trust me.”

“That part I get.” Dick deflates, giving Bruce the same look of bone-deep weariness he sees in the mirror after his worst nights as Batman. Dick’s barely eighteen. He shouldn’t look like that yet. “But did you really have to pick a kid who looks just like me? Which, by the way, also means he looks just like you?”

“Insulting,” a new voice says and they both look to see Jason standing in the doorway. He reeks of cigarettes despite the fact that one of Bruce’s stipulations on allowing him to be Robin had been quitting. “B’s old and your hair is a tragedy. I don’t look like nobody but me.”

“Anybody,” Bruce corrects, because he knows Jason actually cares about the grammatical faux pas. He doesn’t bother chastising him for eavesdropping. He and Dick are generally too loud when they argue to expect secrecy.

“Fuck,” Jason says. “You’re right. Double negative. And if you tell Alfred about the cursing, I’ll tell him that you and Dickie here were yelling in front of impressionable youth.”

Bruce catches the flash of amusement in Dick’s eyes and feels a small bite of triumph. For better or worse, Dick’s a lot like him. Figures he’d be similarly weak against Jason’s abrasive charm.

“If I have to stay here another minute, I’m going have to punch the old man.” Dick’s tone is light, but Bruce can still hear the bite to the words. “And yeah, it’s at least half about you, but it’s not actually your fault.”

Jason’s eyes flicker to Bruce and back to Dick, something about the situation making him skittish again. Bruce has not been shy about the standards Dick set as Robin and Jason, with a competitive streak a mile wide, has not been shy about his goal to exceed every one.

Dick claps his hands. “Tell you what, how about I take the kid out for food before I go back to never talking to you.”

“Bruce—“ Jason starts.

“Kid,” Dick says, steering him to the door, “we are taking the flashiest car and we are absolutely not asking permission.”

Bruce winces. He’s sure Jason was sold at the word _car._

* * *

The tabloids.

Well, at least he gets a laugh out of the ones about Robin.

EXCLUSIVE _: BATMAN’S PRETEEN CLONE ARMY_

The ones about Jason on the other hand:

_BRUCE WAYNE TO FOSTER SECOND CHILD: ORPHAN OR ILLEGITIMATE HEIR?_

Jason bites the same ‘reporter’ at a gala when she gets too close. Bruce barters her silence by dropping his libel suit.

The two headlines later become funny in exactly the opposite ways.

* * *

Jason’s death is the breaking point in a lot of ways.

The worst is the fact that Bruce has to fake the circumstances even though the death is achingly real. Robin and Jason can’t have died in the same way. Really, they can’t be connected at all. Because if they are and Bruce is found out, he loses his last avenue for getting justice. Because someone needs to pay for this.

So he stages a crime scene, makes sure that pieces of Jason’s DNA are left in the blast and makes sure there’s nothing of Robin. Then, he very carefully directs the samples to a lab that will tie the remains to his son and inevitably leak the results to the press.

He departs the country in a fog, thinking of Jason’s smile, his laugh, his unique spirit.

When he lands, it’s to considerable chaos.

See, the results of the DNA test, as expected, had leaked.

And now all of Gotham thought that Bruce Wayne was dead.

* * *

Bruce should have seen it before.

He’d contaminated precisely one DNA test in his life and it was the one he’d done shortly after picking Jason up. He redoes it using buccal cells from Jason’s now-discarded tooth brush. And then redoes it again using the pool of blood from the ruined Robin costume. And again using a blood stain on the collar of Jason’s Gotham Academy uniform.

They all come back the same.

They all come back as _Bruce Wayne._

Which is impossible. Bruce might not have DNA tested his sons down to a cellular level, but they have different fingerprints. He knows that much for sure.

Except, identical twins have different fingerprints. Fingerprints form from the ways that a fetus presses against barriers in utero. Fingerprints don’t imply anything about DNA.

Bruce has Alfred bring down the old family photo albums and he takes a picture of his own face to scrutinize next to Jason at twelve, at thirteen, at fifteen. He’s smaller than Bruce had been, but that wouldn’t be unusual considering the adolescent malnutrition.

Bruce is struck again not by how similar he and Jason look, but by how much Jason looks like Dick.

A hunch starts to form in his gut, mixing with the sickly flavor of his grief. He’d ignored it once, willfully discarding the evidence. He can’t ignore this again.

* * *

Dick’s DNA is exactly what Bruce feared it might be. A match for Jason. A match for him.

A clone. Just like Jason. Someone out there had his DNA. Bruce Wayne’s DNA, not Batman’s, which is perhaps the only redeeming factor about this. Dick’s childhood could be verified right up to their introduction. Mary Grayson had been participating in a surrogacy program so she could fund her schooling, but she’d gotten cold feet about giving up the child. So, as many young adults threaten, but few actually do, she’d run away to join the circus. His initial meeting with Dick had been happenstance.

The pull he’d felt to the boy was anything but.

And Jason?

The best he could tell was when Willis Todd had seen an infant with some apparent value, he’d taken the child and run. Bruce doesn’t know if he’d traced the child’s lineage or not, but it appears that Willis’s death was at least tangentially related to the crime.

Bruce goes out looking for answers. He doesn’t find anything but bruised knuckles and bloodied fists. He’s not sure whose blood it is, but he knows he doesn’t care.

Dick is off-planet for the funeral and when Bruce breaks the news of Jason’s death, they have another screaming fight and Bruce succumbs to the dissociating realization that he may as well be screaming at himself. He doesn’t tell Dick the other news. He doesn’t think it’s a good time.

* * *

When Tim Drake comes to Wayne Manor to tell him he needs to take Dick back on as Robin, Bruce barely hears him. Because Tim Drake has black hair and blue eyes and an air of calculating intelligence that Bruce knows almost too well.

He shuts the door on Tim Drake.

* * *

_BATMAN CLONES THIRD ROBIN_ the headlines read.

Bruce stares at the DNA test results and then his subsequent research into the Drakes, cursing his life and everyone involved. This one, at least has a clear cut motive. Janet, Tim’s mother—or rather surrogate mother—had been very interested in acquiring the Wayne family fortune and apparently okay with going through some rather dubious channels to acquire it.

Batman follows the trail through a maze of shady subsidiaries and shell corporation until he lands on a name: _Cadmus_.

The place is too big to raid on his own and he can’t imagine asking Nightwing or Robin for help with something that so directly involves them. Of course, he also doesn’t want to broadcast the fact that he has cared for multiple clones of himself and has a potentially an unknown number still in the wild to the Justice League.

But most of the Justice League doesn’t know he’s Bruce Wayne, so he figures he can mitigate.

When they actually get around to raiding the place, the only clone they actually find is one they later dub Superboy.

 _Tag,_ Bruce thinks looking at Superman, with no small amount of giddy relief and volunteers to be the one to review the case file.

* * *

It turns out Cadmus picked Bruce Wayne’s DNA mostly for money and a little for convenience. They needed to make sure the technology worked and they were pretty sure that Thomas and Martha Wayne would pay ransom for a child with Bruce’s DNA no matter the origin. When his parents had been murdered, Cadmus scrapped the ransom plans, figuring they couldn’t ransom Bruce to himself. A few years later they’d moved onto Kryptonian genetics and scrapped the Clone Bruce Wayne project entirely.

Four is the final number of clones discarding the non-viable embryos and the aborted experiments. Four clones of Bruce Wayne who made it into the real world through either theft, money, or happenstance. Dick. Jason. Tim.

And one unknown. One—if the notes are correct—who has a slightly different makeup than the others. The experiment had been marked for termination due to a defect allowing increased influence from the surrogate’s eggs. Only the surrogate had taken a job in another city and moved, never bothering to update a forwarding address. Following a failure in one of the Cadmus servers, the lab simply _lost track of her._

The failing seems almost spectacularly lucky, but Bruce’s skeptical brain is preoccupied with the other realities of the missing clone. The differences in genetics that mean he might not look exactly like the rest of them. _A child_ , some part of Bruce’s brain whispers, but he quashes it down. Dick, Jason and Tim are (were) all his children regardless of their shared DNA.

* * *

When he runs the Red Hood’s DNA, he winds up staring at all-to-familiar results.

“Whoa, B.” Dick says, looking over his shoulder. “I was wondering when we would get to the evil twin part of superheroing.”

“Hn,” Bruce replies. He clicks through the results, wondering how it was possible that his DNA could have produced a chatterbox like Dick. He links the Hood’s files with the one on Cadmus. Bruce is… less surprised that his DNA could produce someone willing to murder gang leaders and rapists. There’s a reason he’s never let himself cross the line to killing during his time as Batman. He’s not sure he’d ever stop once he started.

At least that’s the last clone identified.

“Wait a second,” Dick says. “What’s this about you having at least four known clones?”

Bruce swivels his head to the other terminal where Dick is no doubt picking through case files he should have password protected. But password protection usually just made a Robin more curious.

After a long moment, Dick looks over at him. “This is a joke.”

“Dick,” Bruce tries.

Dick squeezes his eyes shut. “Right. You don’t really do jokes. Except you have to do jokes, because I do jokes and what the actual fuck, Bruce?”

“I couldn’t tell you.” They’re the wrong words but they’re all Bruce has. “You had parents and—”

“You’re damn right I had parents,” Dick says. “And you’re a fucking idiot for thinking this would change any part of that.”

They both go silent for a long moment, Dick scrolling through the file on the computer and Bruce staring at Dick. There’s a resemblance between the two of them of course, but considering the genetics, it’s a fairly underwhelming one. They’d broken their noses in different directions and seemed to change the entire shape of their face. Dick doesn’t carry the same bulk that Bruce wears though it’s possible he could still broaden as he ages. Bruce has frown lines etched into his face while Dick is more likely to flash dimples from a broad smile.

Dick breaks the silence. “You didn’t know when you took me in, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“And if you had?”

“You were happy. You were safe. I never would have done anything to jeopardize that.”

Dick lets out a disbelieving huff. He has a point. Robin has never been safe. Jason more than proved that.

“I think I’m going to half to leave now,” Dick says. “Because if I don’t, I’m going to say something I can’t take back. And before I see you next, you’re going to tell Tim. Because if you don’t, I really won’t be able to forgive you.”

“You think you can forgive me?”

Dick’s smile is crooked, but genuine and Bruce wonders if that’s his smile, too, or if it’s a product of circumstances. Some combination of the Graysons, Alfred, Barbara, the Titans and Dick himself.

“You’re my Dad,” Dick says. “Not my only one and I’m not even going to touch the part about blood, but that doesn’t make it less true.” He stands up. “Talk to Tim or I will eviscerate you.”

“You don’t have it in you,” Bruce says, even though he knows it’s a lie.

“I’ll ask Alfred to do it for me.” Dick grabs the last of his kit and moves to the cave’s exit. “I’ll see you around, Bruce.”

Alfred finds him there hours later, the files still open on the computer. “I take it Master Dick had an unwelcome realization today?”

Bruce looks up. “You knew?”

“I watched you grow up,” Alfred replies. His hands are clasped behind his back. “I watched all of you. How could I not at least suspect?”

Bruce gives a slow nod. “Red Hood’s DNA sample came back. It matches mine.”

“As I suspected it might,” Alfred answers. “We received this in the post today.”

It’s a book. A first edition. The sort of find that would have delighted Jason. It’s cinched closed with a lock of green hair.

“There’s still another clone out there,” Bruce says. “Cadmus had a record of four of them. It might not be him.”

He wants desperately for the Red Hood to be Jason.

It will break his heart if the Red Hood is Jason.

* * *

Bruce makes a trip to Titans Tower and tells Tim everything over breakfast. When he finishes and directs Tim to the correct Cadmus file on the computer in case he wanted follow-up information, Tim asks, “Is that it?”

Bruce had be expecting more fireworks after his conversation with Dick. “Should there be more?”

“No,” Tim says. “It’s just… Mom told me.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I was about seven? Eight? Mom told me Dad wasn’t my real Dad and that I had the same DNA as Bruce Wayne so I was going to be able to take over both companies one day. It seemed a little weird, but Mom doesn’t actually lie a lot, so I started following you. Which is why I found out you were Batman. When I saw you with Dick and Jason, I figured you’d found them and brought them in. I didn’t think it was supposed to be a secret.”

“This doesn’t change anything,” Bruce says.

“Why would it?” Tim asks.

* * *

“Nature or nurture, B,” Jason taunts as the Joker spits blood in front of them both. “What’s it going to be?”

Red Hood’s Jason.

Red Hood’s a twisted version of _him._

Red Hood’s the son he thought he’d lost.

“Going to let me kill him?” Jason cocks the gun as Joker convulses with laughter. “I _know_ you have it in you.”

Because Jason has it in him.

He can’t do it.

He can’t let Jason do it.

(He makes a third choice.)

* * *

Dick doesn’t bring it up again. Jason falls completely off the map. Tim sends him a screen shot of a text message chain with Superboy that appears to be titled _clone club._ Superman asks him for parenting advice. He doesn’t find the remaining clone, though, to be fair, Bruce hasn’t exactly been looking. If he’s honest, he barely even thinks about it until the day, he walks into a Wayne Manor bathroom to find Stephanie Brown touching up her roots.

Stephanie’s been Tim’s friend for years and while he’s seen her both around the manor and in Gotham masquerading as Spoiler, he doesn’t know her well. He certainly never realized that isn’t a natural blond.

“What are you looking at?” she snaps. “How many natural blonds do you _actually_ know?”

Bruce might be imagining it, but her eyes are a very particular shade of blue. “I was under the impression that most people went to salons for their hair care needs.”

“Rich people, sure,” Stephanie says. “But I’m not one of those and Tim said I could use one of your bathrooms to freshen this up because they’re much much nicer than mine.”

“Of course,” Bruce says. “And friend of Tim’s.”

Stephanie eyes him suspiciously. “Thank you,” she says.

Bruce tries to think of a way to ask for her a DNA sample, but doesn’t manage to spit out the words. He thinks of it every time he sees her in the field. Every time he catches what looks like his Martha Wayne’s bone structure in the line of her cheek. When she takes the Robin mantel, she reminds him so much of a younger Jason that it’s sometimes hard to focus.

He’s inordinately glad to hear that she and Tim are not dating.

* * *

“You know, Tim once said something to me about clones and a genetic predisposition to vigilantism,” Stephanie’s voice cuts through Bruce’s sleep-addled mind. “He also thought it was actually super handy that we can all swap blood in a pinch. Do you know how rare that is? That five unrelated vigilantes are all universal donors? It’s like one in—“

“About eight hundred thousand,” Bruce finishes.

Stephanie’s peeled off her domino mask and shucked Robin’s tunic in favor of a purple tank top, though she’s still wearing the padded leggings. Bruce can see the hint of black roots along her hairline and the waxy pallor of someone who has recently donated blood. She peels back the wrapper of a candy bar and takes a bite. “Whatever it is, it’s way too fucking high.”

Bruce tries to shift in the bed, but feels the sharp bite of pain in his side. Ah. Not so much sleep-addled as bullet-addled. His eyes slide off Stephanie and to the IV stand where a bag of blood is dripping slowly into his arm. “Thank you, Stephanie.”

“Tell you what, make me a promise and we’ll call it even.”

Bruce’s head is foggy. She’s part of his family. He’s already written her into the will. “ _Anything_ ,” he slurs.

She raises an eyebrow, but rolls with it, using the still-wrapped portion of her candy bar to poke at the blood bag. “I need you to _never_ give me follow up information about why we can all swap blood.”

* * *

There is a boy on his doorstep.

He is about the same size Jason and Dick both were when he found them, but Jason had been malnourished and Dick hadn’t even been ten years old, so his age-to-size scale for children isn’t finely calibrated.

But it is definitely the right scale. Because while the boy is darker skinned than most of his other children, the shock of dark hair and startlingly blue eyes spark a familiar feeling in his stomach.

“Beloved,” the boy’s companion greets.

Bruce blinks.

Talia al Ghul is _also_ on his doorstep. That is definitely something that should have clicked faster. He’s usually better at responding to possible threats, but his brain has glitched and all he can think is: “Another one?”

Talia arches a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Our intelligence did not report you having another son.”

“I have three,” Bruce corrects.

“-Tt-” the boy says. “Inferior specimens. None of them are your blood.”

“Hn,” Bruce replies, which means something like _you’re going to lose a DNA relations contest._ It’s not something he wants to verbalize in front of Talia and this strange child.

“Damian,” Talia says sternly. “That is no way to speak to your father.”

Oh God. Talia’s here. He has a biological son with Talia al Ghul.

“Talia,” Bruce implores. “How does something like this happen?”

Flint flashes in her eyes. “Bruce, we slept together on multiple occasions. Surely I don’t have to explain further.”

Bruce tucks all the information of the last five minutes into a box he can examine later and tries to shuck his frustration with Talia’s ten-plus years of hiding a _son_ from him. He crouches down and examines the boy’s face.

His son has a button nose. A rounder face that Bruce’s square now. No cleft to his chin.

“Damian,” he says. “It is very nice to meet you.”

* * *

“I can’t believe you made the murder brat Robin!” Red Hood calls from the next rooftop.

Damian, predictably, rises to the bait. “Worried about replacement by a superior model?”

Bruce winces because for a long time, that was exactly what Jason had been worried about. He’s been doing better lately, but their truce is still a tenuous thing. But even if he doesn’t attack, Jason delights in stirring shit.

“Been there,” Hood says, “done that. I just kind of thought that being a Bat clone was a Robin prerequisite. Guess the old man’s really been letting standards slide.”

He tilts his head to Bruce and even despite the helmet, Bruce swears he can feel Jason’s smirk as he grapples away.

“Bat clones?” Robin calls after him, running to the rooftop’s edge as Jason swings away. “What do you mean by Bat clones? Father? What did he mean?”

If Bruce stays very still, maybe he can pretend this conversation isn’t happening.

“Father!”

**Author's Note:**

> Official petition to give every comics!Robins at least one consistent distinctive feature.


End file.
